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Four signs the US is creeping towards a kleptocracy under Trump’s watch

If the past year has shown us anything, it’s that there’s been a blurring of the lines between the Trump Organization’s business interests, political decisions made by the administration and Congress, and how tax payer money is spent. That, and Trump continues to profit from his businesses, despite promises to divest.

Trump’s fondness for nepotism echoes the actions of countless corrupt leaders across the world. In an attempt to remove any conflict of interest, Trump handed his businesses over to his children. This fails to address the conflict of interest problem and simply leaves us in the dark about his political motivation. Are decisions made in the interest of the American people, or to benefit himself and his family?

From Angola to Equatorial Guinea and Cambodia, countries where Global Witness has exposed corruption, notoriously corrupt and kleptocratic leaders and their families have profited greatly at the expense of the public good. How were they able to do this? Through consolidating power by putting relatives in high-level positions, censoring and threatening the press, promoting secrecy, and blocking or opposing transparency laws.

1.)Trump is using his
presidency to enrich himself

The
Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. opened its doors shortly before
the 2016 election, and is now a favorite go-to place of foreign governments and
industry groups, like the
American Petroleum Institute, looking to cozy up to
Trump and his administration.

From
September 2016 through April 2017, Trump made $19.7 million from the hotel.
Officials, diplomats and lobbyists linked to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and
Azerbaijan – all countries perceived to be highly corrupt according to
Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index – have chosen to host
lavish events at the hotel. Bahrain and Kuwait even shifted events previously
booked at other venues to the hotel, according to TIME.

Maryland,
Washington D.C., and nearly 200 Democratic Congress members have
sued Trump, alleging this violates
the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, stating that a president may
not accept gifts or benefits from foreign governments.

Lawsuits
from public interest groups have revealed that several US agencies – such as
the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security – have been
spending taxpayer money putting up staff at
Trump hotels and resorts since he took office.

A
recent investigation by Global Witness,Narco-a-Lago: Money
Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama reveals that Donald Trump
made millions from selling his name to a Panama development used to launder
money from Latin American drug cartels. Trump’s Presidential disclosures
show he was still making money from a management contract for the Trump Ocean
Club when he took office in 2017.

2.)Nepotism (aka – appointing
one’s own family to political positions)

Nepotism,
or when someone uses their position of power to provide a job or favor to a
family member or friend, is a tried and trusted method to hold onto and
consolidate power, while also allowing family members to profit from public
office.

Trump’s
appointing his son-in-law Jared Kusher as White House “senior adviser” and his
daughter Ivanka Trump as “adviser” raises alarm bells as both are still closely
connected to their families’ billion dollar businesses – and rife with
potential conflicts of interest.

The
Kushner family even came under fire
earlier this year in Beijing for appearing to lure $500,000 investments for one
of their developments with the prospect of getting an investor visa to
immigrate to the US. Kushner’s position at the White House was also referenced
at the same event.

Global
Witness investigations have exposed similar behavior in countries such as
Cambodia and Equatorial Guinea. In the latter, President Obiang uses the
country’s oil wealth to enrich himself and his family. Our investigations
have exposed how the President’s son
and government minister, Teodorin Obiang, has spent millions of dollars
sustaining a playboy lifestyle in Europe and the U.S. while earning a
government salary of only a few thousand dollars a month.

3.)Censorship and attacks on a
free press

Since
Trump became president he’s tweeted about “Fake News” 155 times – that’s just
about every other day. When faced with critical news, or news not to his
liking, he labels it as “Fake News” and attacks outlets and networks like CNN,
New York Times, and NBC – even going so far as to suggest
NBC’s license should be revoked – in
other words, that they should be shut down.

One
Sunday morning he
tweeted a mocked-up video of him punching and
wrestling a figure whose head had been replaced by the CNN logo. The end of the
video proclaims that CNN is “FNN: Fraud News Network”. In a world where more
and more journalists are jailed and murdered around the world each year – these
threats are serious.

This tactic to
delegitimize and attack the press is a hallmark characteristic of authoritarian
and kleptocratic regimes who want to control information flow and crack down on
anything they believe could lead to dissent. In a crackdown on free speech this
summer, Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen took 33 radio stations off air and the
US-backed paper The
Cambodia Daily
was handed a US$ 6.3 million tax bill it
says is politically motivated. In a regime spanning
30 years, Hun Sen has systematically enriched his family and allies, while
quashing all political opposition.

4.)A growing clamp down on
transparency and accountability

From
Angola
to
Kazakhstan
to
the DRC, Global Witness’ investigations have shown how secrecy in the natural
resource sector entrenches corruption and props up kleptocratic regimes.
Trump is now taking a similar approach by attacking a U.S. transparency
law and initiatives that aim to help combat natural resource corruption in the
US and globally.

The
first legislation introduced by House Republicans once Trump took office was an
effort to derail Dodd-Frank Section 1504, a bi-partisan anti-corruption and
transparency law that requires US listed oil, gas and mining companies to
disclose the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of payments they make to
foreign governments. Ultimately Congress
voted to overturn the rule to implement this
transparency provision, in what can clearly be seen as a gift to big oil.

Similarly
the Trump administration and House Republicans have attacked the conflict
minerals provision of Dodd-Frank, Section 1502. This law requires that
U.S. companies carry out supply chain due diligence on their mineral
supply chains to ensure that the tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold in their
products originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring
countries have not contributed to armed groups or human rights abuses.

In
another telling move, in November, the US withdrew from implementing the
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a multi-stakeholder global anti-corruption program for the
oil, gas and mining sector. Another clear win for Exxon and Chevron, whose
penchant for secrecy threatens to breed corruption.